SMARTD(8)

NAME
smartd - SMART Disk Monitoring Daemon

SYNOPSIS
smartd [options]

FULL PATH
/usr/sbin/smartd

PACKAGE VERSION
smartmontools-5.30 released 2004/03/07 at 20:57:36 UTC

DESCRIPTION
smartd is a daemon that monitors the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) system built into many ATA-3 and later ATA, IDE and SCSI-3 hard drives. The purpose of SMART is to monitor the reliability of the hard drive and predict drive failures, and to carry out different types of drive self-tests. This version of smartd is compatible with ATA/ATAPI-5 and earlier standards (see REFERENCES below). smartd will attempt to enable SMART monitoring on ATA devices (equivalent to smartctl -s on) and polls these and SCSI devices every 30 minutes (configurable), logging SMART errors and changes of SMART Attributes via the SYSLOG interface. The default location for these SYSLOG notifications and warnings is /var/log/messages. To change this default location, please see the '-l' command-line option described below. If you send a USR1 signal to smartd it will immediately check the status of the disks, and then return to polling the disks every 30 minutes. See the '-i' option below for additional details. smartd can be configured at start-up using the configuration file /etc/smartd.conf. If the configuration file is subsequently modified, smartd can be told to re-read the configuration file by sending it a HUP signal, for example with the command:
killall -HUP smartd.
On startup, if smartd finds a syntax error in the configuration file, it will print an error message and then exit. However if smartd is already running, then is told with a HUP signal to re-read the configuration file, and then find a syntax error in this file, it will print an error message and then continue, ignoring the contents of the (faulty) configuration file, as if the HUP signal had never been received. When smartd is running in debug mode, the QUIT signal (normally generated from a shell with CONTROL-C) is treated in the same way as a HUP signal: it makes smartd reload its configuration file. To exit smartd use CONTROL-\. On startup, in the absence of the configuration file /etc/smartd.conf, the smartd daemon first scans for all devices that support SMART. The scanning is done as follows:

    LINUX:
        Examine all entries "/dev/hd[a-t]" for IDE/ATA devices, and "/dev/sd[a-z]" for SCSI devices.

    FREEBSD:
        Examine all entries "/dev/ad[0-9]+" for IDE/ATA devices and "/dev/da[0-9]+" for SCSI devices.

    NETBSD:
        Authoritative list of disk devices is obtained from sysctl 'hw.disknames'.

    SOLARIS:
        Examine all entries "/dev/rdsk/c?t?d?s?" for IDE/ATA and SCSI disk devices, and entries "/dev/rmt/*" for SCSI tape devices.

    WINDOWS:
        Examine all entries "/dev/hd[a-j]" ("\\.\PhysicalDisk[0-9]") for IDE/ATA devices on WinNT4/2000/XP, "/dev/hd[a-d]" (bitmask from "\\.\SMARTVSD") for IDE/ATA devices on Win95/98/98SE/ME. Scanning of SCSI/ASPI devices is not implemented yet.

smartd then monitors for all possible SMART errors (corresponding to the '-a' Directive in the configuration file; see CONFIGURATION FILE below). Note that when there is no configuration file, and smartd scans for devices on startup, warning messages may appear in SYSLOG (by default /var/log/messages) about missing block-major-xx devices. These messages are usually harmless. Alternatively, the configuration file can be used to exclude non-existent devices by giving a list of devices to monitor at start-up.

OPTIONS
Long options are not supported on all systems. Use 'smartd -h' to see the available options.

-d, --debug
    Runs smartd in "debug" mode. In this mode, it displays status information to STDOUT rather than logging it to SYSLOG and does not fork(2) into the background and detach from the controlling terminal. In this mode, smartd also prints more verbose information about what it is doing than when operating in "daemon" mode. In this mode, the QUIT signal (normally generated from a terminal with CONTROL-C) makes smartd reload its configuration file. Please use CONTROL-\ to exit.

-D, --showdirectives
    Prints a list (to STDOUT) of all the possible Directives which may appear in the configuration file /etc/smartd.conf, and then exits. These Directives are also described later in this man page. They may appear in the configuration file following the device name.

-h, --help, --usage
    Prints usage message to STDOUT and exits.

-i N, --interval=N
    Sets the interval between disk checks to N seconds, where N is a decimal integer. The minimum allowed value is ten and the maximum is the largest positive integer that can be represented on your system (often 2^31-1). The default is 1800 seconds. Note that the superuser can make smartd check the status of the disks at any time by sending it the SIGUSR1 signal, for example with the command:
    kill -SIGUSR1 <pid>
    where <pid> is the process id number of smartd. One may also use:
    killall -USR1 smartd
    for the same purpose.

-l FACILITY, --logfacility=FACILITY
    Uses syslog facility FACILITY to log the messages from smartd. Here FACILITY is one of local0, local1, ..., local7, or daemon [default]. If this command-line option is not used, then by default messages from smartd are logged to the facility daemon. If you would like to have smartd messages logged somewhere other than the default /var/log/messages location, this can typically be accomplished with (for example) the following steps:

    [1] Modify the script that starts smartd to include the smartd command-line argument '-l local3'. This tells smartd to log its messages to facility local3.

    [2] Modify the syslogd configuration file (typically /etc/syslog.conf) by adding a line of the form:
        local3.* /var/log/smartd.log
        This tells syslogd to log all the messages from facility local3 to the designated file: /var/log/smartd.log.

    [3] Tell syslogd to re-read its configuration file, typically by sending the syslogd process a SIGHUP hang-up signal.

    [4] Start (or restart) the smartd daemon.
    For more detailed information, please refer to the man pages for syslog.conf, syslogd, and syslog. You may also want to modify the log rotation configuration files; see the man pages for logrotate and examine your system's /etc/logrotate.conf file.

-p NAME, --pidfile=NAME
    Writes pidfile NAME containing the smartd Process ID number (PID). To avoid symlink attacks make sure the directory to which pidfile is written is only writeable for root. Without this option, or if the --debug option is given, no PID file is written on startup. If smartd is killed with a maskable signal then the pidfile is removed.

-q WHEN, --quit=WHEN
    Specifies when, if ever, smartd should exit. The valid arguments are to this option are: nodev - Exit if there are no devices to monitor, or if any errors are found at startup in the configuration file. This is the default. errors - Exit if there are no devices to monitor, or if any errors are found in the configuration file /etc/smartd.conf at startup or whenever it is reloaded. nodevstartup - Exit if there are no devices to monitor at startup. But continue to run if no devices are found whenever the configuration file is reloaded. never - Only exit if a fatal error occurs (no remaining system memory, invalid command line arguments). In this mode, even if there are no devices to monitor, or if the configuration file /etc/smartd.conf has errors, smartd will continue to run, waiting to load a configuration file listing valid devices. onecheck - Start smartd in debug mode, then register devices, then check device's SMART status once, and then exit with zero exit status if all of these steps worked correctly. This last option is intended for 'distribution-writers' who want to create automated scripts to determine whether or not to automatically start up smartd after installing smartmontools. After starting smartd with this command-line option, the distribution's install scripts should wait a reasonable length of time (say ten seconds). If smartd has not exited with zero status by that time, the script should send smartd a SIGTERM or SIGKILL and assume that smartd will not operate correctly on the host. Conversely, if smartd exits with zero status, then it is safe to run smartd in normal daemon mode. If smartd is unable to monitor any devices or encounters other problems then it will return with non-zero exit status.

-r TYPE, --report=TYPE
    Intended primarily to help smartmontools developers understand the behavior of smartmontools on non-conforming or poorly conforming hardware. This option reports details of smartd transactions with the device. The option can be used multiple times. When used just once, it shows a record of the ioctl() transactions with the device. Whe used more than once, the detail of these ioctl() transactions are reported in greater detail. The valid arguments to this option are: ioctl - report all ioctl() transactions. ataioctl - report only ioctl() transactions with ATA devices. scsiioctl - report only ioctl() transactions with SCSI devices. Any argument may include a positive integer to specify the level of detail that should be reported. The argument should be followed by a comma then the integer with no spaces. For example, ataioctl,2 The default level is 1, so '-r ataioctl,1' and '-r ataioctl' are equivalent.

-V, --version, --license, --copyright
    Prints license, copyright, and CVS version information onto STDOUT and then exits. Please include this information if you are reporting bugs, or have specific questions about the behavior of smartd.

EXAMPLES
smartd
Runs the daemon in forked mode. This is the normal way to run smartd. Entries are logged to SYSLOG (by default /var/log/messages.) smartd -d -i 30
Run in foreground (debug) mode, checking the disk status every 30 seconds. smartd -q onecheck
Registers devices, and checks the status of the devices exactly once. The exit status (the bash $? variable) will be zero if all went well, and nonzero if no devices were detected or some other problem was encountered.
Note that smartmontools provides a start-up script in /etc/rc.d/init.d/smartd which is responsible for starting and stopping the daemon via the normal init interface. Using this script, you can start smartd by giving the command:
/etc/rc.d/init.d/smartd start
and stop it by using the command:
/etc/rc.d/init.d/smartd stop
If you want smartd to start running whenever your machine is booted, this can be enabled by using the command:
/sbin/chkconfig --add smartd
and disabled using the command:
/sbin/chkconfig --del smartd

CONFIGURATION FILE /etc/smartd.conf
In the absence of a configuration file, smartd will try to open the 20 ATA devices /dev/hd[a-t] and the 26 SCSI devices /dev/sd[a-z] under Linux. Under FreeBSD, smartd will try to open all existing ATA devices (with entries in /dev) /dev/ad[0-9]+ and all existing SCSI devices /dev/da[0-9]+. This can be annoying if you have an ATA or SCSI device that hangs or misbehaves when receiving SMART commands. Even if this causes no problems, you may be annoyed by the string of error log messages about block-major devices that can't be found, and SCSI devices that can't be opened. One can avoid this problem, and gain more control over the types of events monitored by smartd, by using the configuration file /etc/smartd.conf. This file contains a list of devices to monitor, with one device per line. An example file is included with the smartmontools distribution. You will find this sample configuration file in /usr/share/doc/smartmontools-5.30/. For security, the configuration file should not be writable by anyone but root. The syntax of the file is as follows:

    There should be one device listed per line, although you may have lines that are entirely comments or white space. Any text following a hash sign '#' and up to the end of the line is taken to be a comment, and ignored. Lines may be continued by using a backslash '\' as the last non-whitespace or non-comment item on a line. [Note: a line whose first character is a hash sign '#' is treated as a white-space blank line, not as a non-existent line, and will end a continuation line.]

Here is an example configuration file. It's for illustrative purposes only; please don't copy it onto your system without reading to the end of the DIRECTIVES Section below!
################################################
# This is an example smartd startup config
# file /etc/smartd.conf for monitoring three ATA
# disks, three SCSI disks, and three ATA disks
# behind a 3ware controller.
#
# First ATA disk on each of two interfaces. On
# the second disk, do a long self-test every
# Sunday at 3am.
#
  /dev/hda -a -m admin@example.com,root@localhost
  /dev/hdc -a -I 194 -I 5 -i 12 -s L/../../7/03
#
# SCSI disks. Send a TEST warning email to admin on
# startup.
#
  /dev/sda
  /dev/sdb -m admin@example.com -M test
#
# Strange device. It's SCSI. Do a scheduled
# long self test at 5am Monday/Thursday
  /dev/weird -d scsi -s L/../../(1|4)/05
#
# Four ATA disks connected to a 3ware controller.
# Do short self-tests daily at midnight, 1, 2, and 3 am
  /dev/sdc -d 3ware,0 -a -s S/../.././00
  /dev/sdc -d 3ware,1 -a -s S/../.././01
  /dev/sdd -d 3ware,2 -a -s S/../.././02
  /dev/sdd -d 3ware,3 -a -s S/../.././03
#
# The following line enables monitoring of the
# ATA Error Log and the Self-Test Error Log.
# It also tracks changes in both Prefailure
# and Usage Attributes, apart from Attributes
# 9, 194, and 231, and shows continued lines:
#
  /dev/hdd -l error \
           -l selftest \
           -t \      # Attributes not tracked:
           -I 194 \  # temperature
           -I 231 \  # also temperature
           -I 9      # power-on hours
#
################################################

CONFIGURATION FILE DIRECTIVES

If the first non-comment entry in the configuration file is the text string DEVICESCAN in capital letters, then smartd will ignore any remaining lines in the configuration file, and will scan for devices. DEVICESCAN may optionally be followed by Directives that will apply to all devices that are found in the scan. Please see below for additional details.

The following are the Directives that may appear following the device name or DEVICESCAN on any line of the /etc/smartd.conf configuration file. Note that these are NOT command-line options for smartd. The Directives below may appear in any order, following the device name. For an ATA device, if no Directives appear, then the device will be monitored as if the '-a' Directive (monitor all SMART properties) had been given. If a SCSI disk is listed, it will be monitored at the maximum implemented level: roughly equivalent to using the '-H -l selftest' options for an ATA disk. So with the exception of '-d', '-m', '-l selftest', '-s', and '-M', the Directives below are ignored for SCSI disks. For SCSI disks, the '-m' Directive sends a warning email if the SMART status indicates a disk failure or problem, if the SCSI inquiry about disk status fails, or if new errors appear in the self-test log. If a 3ware controller is used then the corresponding SCSI device must be listed, along with the '-d 3ware,N' Directive (see below). The individual ATA disks hosted by the 3ware controller appear to smartd as normal ATA devices. Hence all the ATA directives can be used for these disks (but see note below).

-d TYPE
    Specifies the type of the device. This Directive may be used multiple times for one device, but the arguments ata, scsi, and 3ware,N are mutually-exclusive. If more than one is given then smartd will use the last one which appears. If none of these three arguments is given, then smartd will first attempt to guess the device type by looking at whether the sixth character in the device name is an 's' or an 'h'. This will work for device names like /dev/hda or /dev/sdb, and corresponds to choosing ata or scsi respectively. If smartd can't guess from this sixth character, then it will simply try to access the device using first ATA and then SCSI ioctl()s. The valid arguments to this Directive are: ata - the device type is ATA. This prevents smartd from issuing SCSI commands to an ATA device. scsi - the device type is SCSI. This prevents smartd from issuing ATA commands to a SCSI device. 3ware,N - the device consists of one or more ATA disks connected to a 3ware RAID controller. The non-negative integer N (in the range from 0 to 15 inclusive) denotes which disk on the controller is monitored. This Directive may at first appear confusing, because the 3ware controller is a SCSI device (such as /dev/sda) and should be listed as such in the the configuration file. However when the '-d 3ware,N' Directive is used, then the corresponding disk is addressed using native ATA commands which are 'passed through' the SCSI driver. All ATA Directives listed in this man page may be used. Note that while you may use any of the 3ware SCSI logical devices /dev/sd? to address any of the physical disks (3ware ports), error and log messages will make the most sense if you always list the 3ware SCSI logical device corresponding to the particular physical disks. Please see the smartctl man page for further details. Note that older 3w-xxxx drivers do not pass the 'Enable Autosave' (-S on) and 'Enable Automatic Offline' (-o on) commands to the disk, and produce these types of harmless syslog error messages instead: '3w-xxxx: tw_ioctl(): Passthru size (123392) too big'. This can be fixed by upgrading to version 1.02.00.037 or later of the 3w-xxxx driver, or by applying a patch to older versions. See http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ for instructions. 3ware controllers are currently ONLY supported under Linux. removable - the device or its media is removable. This indicates to smartd that it should continue (instead of exiting, which is the default behavior) if the device does not appear to be present when smartd is started. This Directive may be used in conjunction with the other '-d' Directives.

-n POWERMODE
    ATA disks have five different power states. In order of increasing power consumption they are: 'OFF', 'SLEEP', 'STANDBY', 'IDLE', and 'ACTIVE'. Typically in the OFF, SLEEP, and STANDBY modes the disk's platters are not spinning. But usually, in response to SMART commands issued by smartd, the disk platters are spun up. So if this option is not used, then a disk which is in a low-power mode may be spun up and put into a higher-power mode when it is periodically polled by smartd. Note that if the disk is in SLEEP mode when smartd is started, then it won't respond to smartd commands, and so it won't be registered as a device for smartd to monitor. If a disk is in any other low-power mode, then the commands issued by smartd to register it will probably cause it to spin-up. The '-n' (nocheck) Directive specifies if smartd's periodic checks should still be carried out when the device is in a low-power mode. It may be used to prevent a disk from being spun-up by periodic smartd polling. The allowed values of POWERMODE are: never - smartd will poll (check) the device regardless of its power mode. This may cause a disk which is spun-down to be spun-up when smartd checks it. This is the default behavior if the '-n' Directive is not given. sleep - do not check the device if it is in SLEEP mode. standby - do not check the device if it is in SLEEP or STANDBY mode. In these modes most disks are not spinning, so if you want to prevent a laptop disk from spinning up each time that smartd polls, this is probably what you want. idle - do not check the device if it is in SLEEP, STANDBY or IDLE mode. In the IDLE state, most disks are still spinning, so this is probably not what you want.

-T TYPE
    Specifies how tolerant smartd should be of SMART command failures. The valid arguments to this Directive are: normal - do not try to monitor the disk if a mandatory SMART command fails, but continue if an optional SMART command fails. This is the default. permissive - try to monitor the disk even if it appears to lack SMART capabilities. This may be required for some old disks (prior to ATA-3 revision 4) that implemented SMART before the SMART standards were incorporated into the ATA/ATAPI Specifications. This may also be needed for some Maxtor disks which fail to comply with the ATA Specifications and don't properly indicate support for error- or self-test logging. [Please see the .B smartctl -T command-line option.]

-o VALUE
    Enables or disables SMART Automatic Offline Testing when smartd starts up and has no further effect. The valid arguments to this Directive are on and off. The delay between tests is vendor-specific, but is typically four hours. Note that SMART Automatic Offline Testing is not part of the ATA Specification. Please see the smartctl -o command-line option documentation for further information about this feature.

-S VALUE
    Enables or disables Attribute Autosave when smartd starts up and has no further effect. The valid arguments to this Directive are on and off. Also affects SCSI devices. [Please see the smartctl -S command-line option.]

-H  Check the SMART health status of the disk. If any Prefailure Attributes are less than or equal to their threshold values, then disk failure is predicted in less than 24 hours, and a message at loglevel 'LOG_CRITICAL' will be logged to syslog. [Please see the smartctl -H command-line option.]

-l TYPE
    Reports increases in the number of errors in one of the two SMART logs. The valid arguments to this Directive are: error - report if that the number of ATA errors reported in the ATA Error Log has increased since the last check. selftest - report if the number of failed tests reported in the SMART Self-Test Log has increased since the last check, or if the timestamp associated with the more recent failed test has increased. Note that such errors will only be logged if you run self-tests on the disk (and it fails a test!). Self-Tests can be run automatically by smartd: please see the '-s' Directive below. Self-Tests can also be run manually by using the '-t short' and '-t long' options of smartctl and the results of the testing can be observed using the smartctl '-l selftest' command-line option.] [Please see the smartctl -l command-line option.]

-s REGEXP
    Run Self-Tests or Offline Immediate Tests, at scheduled times. A Self- or Offline Immediate Test will be run at the end of periodic device polling, if all 12 characters of the string T/MM/DD/d/HH match the extended regular expression REGEXP. Here:

    T   is the type of the test. The values that smartd will try to match (in turn) are: 'L' for a Long Self-Test, 'S' for a Short Self-Test, 'C' for a Conveyance Self-Test (ATA only), and 'O' for an Offline Immediate Test (ATA only). As soon as a match is found, the test will be started and no additional matches will be sought for that device and that polling cycle.

    MM  is the month of the year, expressed with two decimal digits. The range is from 01 (January) to 12 (December) inclusive.

    DD  is the day of the month, expressed with two decimal digits. The range is from 01 to 31 inclusive.

    d   is the day of the week, expressed with one decimal digit. The range is from 1 (Monday) to 7 (Sunday) inclusive.

    HH  is the hour of the day, written with two decimal digits, and given in hours after midnight. The range is 00 (midnight to just before 1am) to 23 (11pm to just before midnight) inclusive.

    Some examples follow. In reading these, keep in mind that in extended regular expressions a dot '.' matches any single character, and a parenthetical expression such as '(A|B|C)' denotes any one of the three possibilities A, B, or C. To schedule a short Self-Test between 2-3am every morning, use:
     -s S/../.././02
    To schedule a long Self-Test between 4-5am every Sunday morning, use:
     -s L/../../7/04
    To schedule a long Self-Test between 10-11pm on the first and fifteenth day of each month, use:
     -s L/../(01|15)/./22
    To schedule an Offline Immediate test after every midnight, 6am, noon,and 6pm, plus a Short Self-Test daily at 1-2am and a Long Self-Test every Saturday at 3-4am, use:
     -s (O/../.././(00|06|12|18)|S/../.././01|L/../../6/03)

    Scheduled tests are run immediately following the regularly-scheduled device polling, if the current local date, time, and test type, match REGEXP. By default the regularly-scheduled device polling occurs every thirty minutes after starting smartd. Take caution if you use the '-i' option to make this polling interval more than sixty minutes: the poll times may fail to coincide with any of the testing times that you have specified with REGEXP, and so the self tests may not take place as you wish. Before running an offline or self-test, smartd checks to be sure that a self-test is not already running. If a self-test is already running, then this running self test will not be interrupted to begin another test. smartd will not attempt to run any type of test if another test was already started or run in the same hour. Each time a test is run, smartd will log an entry to SYSLOG. You can use these to verify that you constructed REGEXP correctly. The matching order (L before S before C before O) ensures that if multiple test types are all scheduled for the same hour, the longer test type has precedence. This is usually the desired behavior.

-m ADD
    Send a warning email to the email address ADD if the '-H', '-l', or '-f' Directives detect a failure or a new error, or if a SMART command to the disk fails. This Directive only works in conjunction with these other Directives (or with the equivalent default '-a' Directive). To prevent your email in-box from getting filled up with warning messages, by default only a single warning will be sent for each of the enabled test types, '-H', '-l', or '-f', even if more than one failure or error is detected or if the failure or error persists. [This behavior can be modified; see the '-M' Directive below.] To send email to more than one user, please use the following "comma separated" form for the address: user1@add1,user2@add2,...,userN@addN (with no spaces). To test that email is being sent correctly, use the '-M test' Directive described below to send one test email message on smartd startup. By default, email is sent using the system mail command. In order that smartd find the mail command (normally /bin/mail) an executable named 'mail' must be in the path of the shell or environment from which smartd was started. If you wish to specify an explicit path to the mail executable (for example /usr/local/bin/mail) or a custom script to run, please use the '-M exec' Directive below. Note that by default under Solaris, in the previous paragraph, 'mailx' and '/bin/mailx' are used, since Solaris '/bin/mail' does not accept a '-s' (Subject) command-line argument. Note also that there is a special argument <nomailer> which can be given to the '-m' Directive in conjunction with the '-M exec' Directive. Please see below for an explanation of its effect. If the mailer or the shell running it produces any STDERR/STDOUT output, then a snippet of that output will be copied to SYSLOG. The remainder of the output is discarded. If problems are encountered in sending mail, this should help you to understand and fix them. If you have mail problems, we recommend running smartd in debug mode with the '-d' flag, using the '-M test' Directive described below.

-M TYPE
    These Directives modify the behavior of the smartd email warnings enabled with the '-m' email Directive described above. These '-M' Directives only work in conjunction with the '-m' Directive and can not be used without it. Multiple -M Directives may be given. If conflicting -M Directives are given (example: -M once -M daily) then the final one (in the example, -M daily) is used. The valid arguments to the -M Directive are: once - send only one warning email for each type of disk problem detected. This is the default. daily - send additional warning reminder emails, once per day, for each type of disk problem detected. diminishing - send additional warning reminder emails, after a one-day interval, then a two-day interval, then a four-day interval, and so on for each type of disk problem detected. Each interval is twice as long as the previous interval. test - send a single test email immediately upon smartd startup. This allows one to verify that email is delivered correctly. exec PATH - run the executable PATH instead of the default mail command, when smartd needs to send email. PATH must point to an executable binary file or script. By setting PATH to point to a customized script, you can make smartd perform useful tricks when a disk problem is detected (beeping the console, shutting down the machine, broadcasting warnings to all logged-in users, etc.) But please be careful. smartd will block until the executable PATH returns, so if your executable hangs, then smartd will also hang. Some sample scripts are included in /usr/share/doc/smartmontools-5.30/examplescripts/. The return status of the executable is recorded by smartd in SYSLOG. The executable is not expectected to write to STDOUT or STDERR. If it does, then this is interpreted as indicating that something is going wrong with your executable, and a fragment of this output is logged to SYSLOG to help you to understand the problem. Normally, if you wish to leave some record behind, the executable should send mail or write to a file or device. Before running the executable, smartd sets a number of environment variables. These environment variables may be used to control the executable's behavior. The environment variables exported by smartd are:
    SMARTD_MAILER is set to the argument of -M exec, if present or else to 'mail' (examples: /bin/mail, mail).
    SMARTD_DEVICE is set to the device path (examples: /dev/hda, /dev/sdb).
    SMARTD_DEVICETYPE is set to the device type (possible values: ata, scsi, 3ware,N). Here N=0,...,15 denotes the ATA disk behind a 3ware RAID controller.
    SMARTD_DEVICESTRING is set to the device description. For SMARTD_DEVICETYPE of ata or scsi, this is the same as SMARTD_DEVICE. For 3ware RAID controllers, the form used is '/dev/sdc [3ware_disk_01]'. In this case the device string contains a space and is NOT quoted. So to use $SMARTD_DEVICESTRING in a bash script you should probably enclose it in double quotes.
    SMARTD_FAILTYPE gives the reason for the warning or message email. The possible values that it takes, and their significance, are: emailtest (this is an email test message); health (the SMART health status indicates imminent failure); usage (a usage Attribute has failed); selftest (the number of self-test failures has increased); errorcount (the number of errors in the ATA error log has increased); FAILEDhealthcheck (the SMART health status command failed); FAILEDreadsmartdata (the command to read SMART Attribute data failed); FAILEDreadsmarterrorlog (the command to read the SMART error log failed); FAILEDreadsmartsefltestlog (the command to read the SMART self-test log failed); abd FAILEDopendevice (the open() command to the device failed).
    SMARTD_ADDRESS is determined by the address argument ADD of the '-m' Directive. If ADD is <nomailer>, then SMARTD_ADDRESS is not set. Otherwise, it is set to the comma-separated-list of email addresses given by the argument ADD, with the commas replaced by spaces (example:admin@example.com root). If more than one email address is given, then this string will contain space characters and is NOT quoted, so to use it in a bash script you may want to enclose it in double quotes.
    SMARTD_MESSAGE is set to the warning email message string from smartd. This message string contains space characters and is NOT quoted. So to use $SMARTD_MESSAGE in a bash script you should probably enclose it in double quotes.
    SMARTD_TFIRST is a text string giving the time and date at which the first problem of this type was reported. This text string contains space characters and no newlines, and is NOT quoted. For example:
    Sun Feb 9 14:58:19 2003 CST
    SMARTD_TFIRSTEPOCH is an integer, which is the unix epoch (number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970) for SMARTD_TFIRST. The shell which is used to run PATH is system-dependent. For vanilla Linux/glibc it's bash. For other systems, the man page for popen(3) should say what shell is used. If the '-m ADD' Directive is given with a normal address argument, then the executable pointed to by PATH will be run in a shell with STDIN receiving the body of the email message, and with the same command-line arguments:
    -s "$SMARTD_SUBJECT" $SMARTD_ADDRESS
    that would normally be provided to 'mail'. Examples include:
    -m user@home -M exec /bin/mail
    -m admin@work -M exec /usr/local/bin/mailto
    -m root -M exec /Example_1/bash/script/below
    If the '-m ADD' Directive is given with the special address argument <nomailer> then the executable pointed to by PATH is run in a shell with no STDIN and no command-line arguments, for example:
    -m <nomailer> -M exec /Example_2/bash/script/below
    If the executable produces any STDERR/STDOUT output, then smartd assumes that something is going wrong, and a snippet of that output will be copied to SYSLOG. The remainder of the output is then discarded. Some EXAMPLES of scripts that can be used with the '-M exec' Directive are given below. Some sample scripts are also included in /usr/share/doc/smartmontools-5.30/examplescripts/.

-f  Check for 'failure' of any Usage Attributes. If these Attributes are less than or equal to the threshold, it does NOT indicate imminent disk failure. It "indicates an advisory condition where the usage or age of the device has exceeded its intended design life period." [Please see the smartctl -A command-line option.]

-p  Report anytime that a Prefail Attribute has changed its value since the last check, 30 minutes ago. [Please see the smartctl -A command-line option.]

-u  Report anytime that a Usage Attribute has changed its value since the last check, 30 minutes ago. [Please see the smartctl -A command-line option.]

-t  Equivalent to turning on the two previous flags '-p' and '-u'. Tracks changes in all device Attributes (both Prefailure and Usage). [Please see the smartctl -A command-line option.]

-i ID
    Ignore device Attribute number ID when checking for failure of Usage Attributes. ID must be a decimal integer in the range from 1 to 255. This Directive modifies the behavior of the '-f' Directive and has no effect without it. This is useful, for example, if you have a very old disk and don't want to keep getting messages about the hours-on-lifetime Attribute (usually Attribute 9) failing. This Directive may appear multiple times for a single device, if you want to ignore multiple Attributes.

-I ID
    Ignore device Attribute ID when tracking changes in the Attribute values. ID must be a decimal integer in the range from 1 to 255. This Directive modifies the behavior of the '-p', '-u', and '-t' tracking Directives and has no effect without one of them. This is useful, for example, if one of the device Attributes is the disk temperature (usually Attribute 194 or 231). It's annoying to get reports each time the temperature changes. This Directive may appear multiple times for a single device, if you want to ignore multiple Attributes.

-r ID
    When tracking, report the Raw value of Attribute ID along with its (normally reported) Normalized value. ID must be a decimal integer in the range from 1 to 255. This Directive modifies the behavior of the '-p', '-u', and '-t' tracking Directives and has no effect without one of them. This Directive may be given multiple times. A common use of this Directive is to track the device Temperature (often ID=194 or 231).

-R ID
    When tracking, report whenever the Raw value of Attribute ID changes. (Normally smartd only tracks/reports changes of the Normalized Attribute values.) ID must be a decimal integer in the range from 1 to 255. This Directive modifies the behavior of the '-p', '-u', and '-t' tracking Directives and has no effect without one of them. This Directive may be given multiple times. If this Directive is given, it automatically implies the '-r' Directive for the same Attribute, so that the Raw value of the Attribute is reported. A common use of this Directive is to track the device Temperature (often ID=194 or 231). It is also useful for understanding how different types of system behavior affects the values of certain Attributes.

-F TYPE
    Modifies the behavior of smartd to compensate for some known and understood device firmware bug. The arguments to this Directive are exclusive, so that only the final Directive given is used. The valid values are: none - Assume that the device firmware obeys the ATA specifications. This is the default, unless the device has presets for '-F' in the device database. samsung - In some Samsung disks (example: model SV4012H Firmware Version: RM100-08) some of the two- and four-byte quantities in the SMART data structures are byte-swapped (relative to the ATA specification). Enabling this option tells smartd to evaluate these quantities in byte-reversed order. Some signs that your disk needs this option are (1) no self-test log printed, even though you have run self-tests; (2) very large numbers of ATA errors reported in the ATA error log; (3) strange and impossible values for the ATA error log timestamps. samsung2 - In more recent Samsung disks (firmware revisions ending in "-23") the number of ATA errors reported is byte swapped. Enabling this option tells smartd to evaluate this quantity in byte-reversed order. Note that an explicit '-F' Directive will over-ride any preset values for '-F' (see the '-P' option below). [Please see the smartctl -F command-line option.]

-v N,OPTION
    Modifies the labeling for Attribute N, for disks which use non-standard Attribute definitions. This is useful in connection with the Attribute tracking/reporting Directives. This Directive may appear multiple times. Valid arguments to this Directive are: 9,minutes - Raw Attribute number 9 is power-on time in minutes. Its raw value will be displayed in the form 'Xh+Ym'. Here X is hours, and Y is minutes in the range 0-59 inclusive. Y is always printed with two digits, for example '06' or '31' or '00'. 9,seconds - Raw Attribute number 9 is power-on time in seconds. Its raw value will be displayed in the form 'Xh+Ym+Zs'. Here X is hours, Y is minutes in the range 0-59 inclusive, and Z is seconds in the range 0-59 inclusive. Y and Z are always printed with two digits, for example '06' or '31' or '00'. 9,halfminutes - Raw Attribute number 9 is power-on time, measured in units of 30 seconds. This format is used by some Samsung disks. Its raw value will be displayed in the form 'Xh+Ym'. Here X is hours, and Y is minutes in the range 0-59 inclusive. Y is always printed with two digits, for example '06' or '31' or '00'. 9,temp - Raw Attribute number 9 is the disk temperature in Celsius. 192,emergencyretractcyclect - Raw Attribute number 192 is the Emergency Retract Cycle Count. 193,loadunload - Raw Attribute number 193 contains two values. The first is the number of load cycles. The second is the number of unload cycles. The difference between these two values is the number of times that the drive was unexpectedly powered off (also called an emergency unload). As a rule of thumb, the mechanical stress created by one emergency unload is equivalent to that created by one hundred normal unloads. 194,10xCelsius - Raw Attribute number 194 is ten times the disk temperature in Celsius. This is used by some Samsung disks (example: model SV1204H with RK100-13 firmware). 194,unknown - Raw Attribute number 194 is NOT the disk temperature, and its interpretation is unknown. This is primarily useful for the -P (presets) Directive. 198,offlinescanuncsectorct - Raw Attribute number 198 is the Offline Scan UNC Sector Count. 200,writeerrorcount - Raw Attribute number 200 is the Write Error Count. 201,detectedtacount - Raw Attribute number 201 is the Detected TA Count. 220,temp - Raw Attribute number 220 is the disk temperature in Celsius. Note: a table of hard drive models, listing which Attribute corresponds to temperature, can be found at: http://coredump.free.fr/linux/hddtemp.db N,raw8 - Print the Raw value of Attribute N as six 8-bit unsigned base-10 integers. This may be useful for decoding the meaning of the Raw value. The form 'N,raw8' prints Raw values for ALL Attributes in this form. The form (for example) '123,raw8' only prints the Raw value for Attribute 123 in this form. N,raw16 - Print the Raw value of Attribute N as three 16-bit unsigned base-10 integers. This may be useful for decoding the meaning of the Raw value. The form 'N,raw16' prints Raw values for ALL Attributes in this form. The form (for example) '123,raw16' only prints the Raw value for Attribute 123 in this form. N,raw48 - Print the Raw value of Attribute N as a 48-bit unsigned base-10 integer. This may be useful for decoding the meaning of the Raw value. The form 'N,raw48' prints Raw values for ALL Attributes in this form. The form (for example) '123,raw48' only prints the Raw value for Attribute 123 in this form.

-P TYPE
    Specifies whether smartd should use any preset options that are available for this drive. The valid arguments to this Directive are: use - use any presets that are available for this drive. This is the default. ignore - do not use any presets for this drive. show - show the presets listed for this drive in the database. showall - show the presets that are available for all drives and then exit. [Please see the smartctl -P command-line option.]

-a  Equivalent to turning on all of the following Directives: '-H' to check the SMART health status, '-f' to report failures of Usage (rather than Prefail) Attributes, '-t' to track changes in both Prefailure and Usage Attributes, '-l selftest' to report increases in the number of Self-Test Log errors, and '-l error' to report increases in the number of ATA errors. Note that -a is the default for ATA devices. If none of these other Directives is given, then -a is assumed.

#   Comment: ignore the remainder of the line.

\   Continuation character: if this is the last non-white or non-comment character on a line, then the following line is a continuation of the current one.

If you are not sure which Directives to use, I suggest experimenting for a few minutes with smartctl to see what SMART functionality your disk(s) support(s). If you do not like voluminous syslog messages, a good choice of smartd configuration file Directives might be:
-H -l selftest -l error -f.
If you want more frequent information, use: -a.

ADDITIONAL DETAILS ABOUT DEVICESCAN
    If the first non-comment entry in the configuration file is the text string DEVICESCAN in capital letters, then smartd will ignore any remaining lines in the configuration file, and will scan for devices. If DEVICESCAN is not followed by any Directives, then smartd will scan for both ATA and SCSI devices, and will monitor all possible SMART properties of any devices that are found. DEVICESCAN may optionally be followed by any valid Directives, which will be applied to all devices that are found in the scan. For example
    DEVICESCAN -m root@example.com
    will scan for all devices, and then monitor them. It will send one email warning per device for any problems that are found.
    DEVICESCAN -d ata -m root@example.com
    will do the same, but restricts the scan to ATA devices only.
    DEVICESCAN -H -d ata -m root@example.com
    will do the same, but only monitors the SMART health status of the devices, (rather than the default -a, which monitors all SMART properties).

EXAMPLES OF SHELL SCRIPTS FOR '-M exec'
    These are two examples of shell scripts that can be used with the '-M exec PATH' Directive described previously. The paths to these scripts and similar executables is the PATH argument to the '-M exec PATH' Directive. Example 1: This script is for use with '-m ADDRESS -M exec PATH'. It appends the output of smartctl -a to the output of the smartd email warning message and sends it to ADDRESS.

    #! /bin/bash
    # Save the email message (STDIN) to a file:
    cat > /root/msg
    # Append the output of smartctl -a to the message:
    /usr/sbin/smartctl -a -d $SMART_DEVICETYPE $SMARTD_DEVICE >> /root/msg

    # Now email the message to the user at address ADD:
    /bin/mail -s "$SMARTD_SUBJECT" $SMARTD_ADDRESS < /root/msg

    Example 2: This script is for use with '-m <nomailer> -M exec PATH'. It warns all users about a disk problem, waits 30 seconds, and then powers down the machine.

    #! /bin/bash
    # Warn all users of a problem
    wall 'Problem detected with disk: ' "$SMARTD_DEVICESTRING"
    wall 'Warning message from smartd is: ' "$SMARTD_MESSAGE"
    wall 'Shutting down machine in 30 seconds... '

    # Wait half a minute
    sleep 30

    # Power down the machine
    /sbin/shutdown -hf now

    Some example scripts are distributed with the smartmontools package, in /usr/share/doc/smartmontools-5.30/examplescripts/. Please note that these scripts typically run as root, so any files that they read/write should not be writable by ordinary users or reside in directories like /tmp that are writable by ordinary users and may expose your system to symlink attacks. As previously described, if the scripts write to STDOUT or STDERR, this is interpreted as indicating that there was an internal error within the script, and a snippet of STDOUT/STDERR is logged to SYSLOG. The remainder is flushed.

NOTES
smartd will make log entries at loglevel LOG_INFO if the Normalized SMART Attribute values have changed, as reported using the '-t', '-p', or '-u' Directives. For example:
'Device: /dev/hda, SMART Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 94 to 93'
Note that in this message, the value given is the 'Normalized' not the 'Raw' Attribute value (the disk temperature in this case is about 22 Celsius). The '-R' and '-r' Directives modify this behavior, so that the information is printed with the Raw values as well, for example:
'Device: /dev/hda, SMART Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 94 [Raw 22] to 93 [Raw 23]'
Here the Raw values are the actual disk temperatures in Celsius. The way in which the Raw values are printed, and the names under which the Attributes are reported, is governed by the various '-v Num,Description' Directives described previously. Please see the smartctl manual page for further explanation of the differences between Normalized and Raw Attribute values. smartd will make log entries at loglevel LOG_CRIT if a SMART Attribute has failed, for example:
'Device: /dev/hdc, Failed SMART Attribute: 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct'
 This loglevel is used for reporting enabled by the '-H', -f', '-l selftest', and '-l error' Directives. Entries reporting failure of SMART Prefailure Attributes should not be ignored: they mean that the disk is failing. Use the smartctl utility to investigate. Under Solaris with the default /etc/syslog.conf configuration, messages below loglevel LOG_NOTICE will not be recorded. Hence all smartd messages with loglevel LOG_INFO will be lost. If you want to use the existing daemon facility to log all messages from smartd, you should change /etc/syslog.conf from:
       ...;daemon.notice;...        /var/adm/messages
to read:
       ...;daemon.info;...          /var/adm/messages
Alternatively, you can use a local facility to log messages: please see the smartd '-l' command-line option described above.

RETURN VALUES
The return value (exit status) of smartd can have the following values:

0:  Daemon startup successful, or smartd was killed by a SIGTERM (or in debug mode, a SIGQUIT).

1:  Commandline did not parse.

2:  There was a problem opening or parsing /etc/smartd.conf.

3:  Forking the daemon failed.

4:  Couldn't create PID file.

8:  smartd ran out of memory during startup.

9:  A compile time constant of smartd was too small. This can be caused by an excessive number of disks, or by lines in /etc/smartd.conf that are too long. Please report this problem to smartmontools-support@lists.sourceforge.net.

10  An inconsistency was found in smartd's internal data structures. This should never happen. It must be due to either a coding or compiler bug. Please report such failures to smartmontools-support@lists.sourceforge.net.

16: A device explicitly listed in /etc/smartd.conf can't be monitored.

17: smartd didn't find any devices to monitor.

254:
    When in daemon mode, smartd received a SIGINT or SIGQUIT. (Note that in debug mode, SIGINT has the same effect as SIGHUP, and makes smartd reload its configuration file. SIGQUIT has the same effect as SIGTERM and causes smartd to exit with zero exit status.

132 and above
    smartd was killed by a signal that is not explicitly listed above. The exit status is then 128 plus the signal number. For example if smartd is killed by SIGKILL (signal 9) then the exit status is 137.

AUTHOR
Bruce Allen smartmontools-support@lists.sourceforge.net
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Physics Department

CREDITS
This code was derived from the smartsuite package, written by Michael Cornwell, and from the previous ucsc smartsuite package. It extends these to cover ATA-5 disks. This code was originally developed as a Senior Thesis by Michael Cornwell at the Concurrent Systems Laboratory (now part of the Storage Systems Research Center), Jack Baskin School of Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz. http://ssrc.soe.ucsc.edu/ .

HOME PAGE FOR SMARTMONTOOLS:
Please see the following web site for updates, further documentation, bug reports and patches:
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

SEE ALSO:
smartd.conf(5), smartctl(8), syslogd(8), syslog.conf(5).

REFERENCES FOR SMART
If you would like to understand better how SMART works, and what it does, a good place to start is Section 8.41 of the 'AT Attachment with Packet Interface-5' (ATA/ATAPI-5) specification. This documents the SMART functionality which the smartmontools utilities provide access to. You can find Revision 1 of this document at http://www.t13.org/project/d1321r1c.pdf .
Future versions of the specifications (ATA/ATAPI-6 and ATA/ATAPI-7), and later revisions (2, 3) of the ATA/ATAPI-5 specification are available from http://www.t13.org/#FTP_site .
The functioning of SMART was originally defined by the SFF-8035i revision 2 and the SFF-8055i revision 1.4 specifications. These are publications of the Small Form Factors (SFF) Committee. Links to these documents may be found in the References section of the smartmontools home page at http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ .

CVS ID OF THIS PAGE:
$Id: smartd.8.in,v 1.46 2004/03/06 19:43:18 ballen4705 Exp $